michelle ree is the founder of students first and former chancellor of dc's public schools. good morning to you. >> good morning. >> certainly when you see the numbers, you have to have a strong reaction. what's the cause? why is everyone surging ahead and we're in the same place we were? >> the interesting thing when you look at these rankings is that the scores of american kids have actually remained pretty consistent over time. the problem is that other countries really are leap frogging ahead of us. these are countries that are not necessarily richer than us or spending more money. we are right now in math sandwiched between the slow lack republic and lithuania. so as a country, we really are not obviously putting the effort and the energy into prioritizing education as sort of the number one issue in the country. >> let me take a step back. i believe that these kids today do more homework than ever before. we understand that if you compare the fifth grade when we were in school compared to fifth graders today, they seem to be ahead of the curve. i never feel as though w